GDIdb (Global Data Industries)

GDIdb software has been designed to allow a database/spreadsheet driven web site to be created using a dial-up or ISDN Internet connection. This is useful in either of the following situations:

1. You have an existing database whose contents you'd like to publish on your Web site.

2. You want to design a web site whose contents and structure can be easily updated by unskilled personnel. (By entering data into a purpose- designed Web Site database)

GDIdb works by executing a script file that describes how to construct a Web site from the datasource, the output of this process is a series of HTML documents that represent both the structure of the database and the information within it. A Script Wizard is included with GDIdb, this utility provides an easy way to create the script you need without having to learn the GDIdb script language, although by editing the script file manually you have total control over the appearance and structure of the HTML generated by GDIdb. The data source itself must be available (as an ODBC compatible database or spreadsheet file) to the computer on which GDIdb is running.

After converting the datasource content to HTML, GDIdb can establish a dial-up connection to your Internet service provider, and use this connection to copy the HTML documents to your Web Server.
Each stage of the operation, from editing and running a script file to uploading the HTML files to the Web server can be done manually, although the Publish function will complete the whole process. An auto-publish facility is included, allowing a schedule of unattended publishing to be created. Clicking the publish button on the GDIdb program toolbar is all that is required to publish your database/spreadsheet to the WWW, allowing manual updating of the web site to be easily performed.